Growing up in Little Odessa, murder was in everyday part of life. Russian mobsters had also migrated from the Soviet Union and when they came to America, their baggage came with them. There is always some gangster getting whacked in my neighborhood, but I have never seen with my own eyes. I had the knack of showing up five minutes before something went down or five minutes after, not that day. It hit me. It couldn't have hit me harder if I was the one who was shot. You go into the restaurant business because people are always going to have to eat. That was the day I realized my destiny laying for fulfilling another basic human need.